Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 25, 2012 @02:36PM
from the lead-differently dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's current legal battles with Samsung encapsulate a large number of patents, innumerable suits and counter-suits, and have resulted in legal motions in 11 jurisdictions across the globe. As you may remember, Steve Jobs in his biography was quite vocal about his intent to go thermonuclear on Android, vowing to spend every last dime in Apple's coffers to destroy Google's mobile OS. But Tim Cook is a bit more level headed about things, expressing during Apple's earnings conference call yesterday that he has has always hated litigation and would much rather settle than to battle in court. The caveat, of course, is that Cook doesn't want Apple to 'become the developer for the world.'" It may not be what Jobs would do, but as zacharye notes, it doesn't seem to be hurting earnings. "Despite early-morning jitters on Wall Street, Apple on Tuesday reported yet another blow-out quarter. The Cupertino, California-based company managed the second most profitable quarter in its history, posting a net profit of $11.6 billion on $39.2 billion in sales. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones into channels last quarter, along with 11.8 million iPads, 7.7 million iPods and 4 million Mac computers. While the firm continues to dominate the technology industry — Apple is currently the most valuable company in the world — several analysts think Apple is just getting started."

Apple really don't invent much new stuff. What they are excellent at is combining existing, often poorly implemented, inventions into very well polished consumer products. That's their business and they're very good at it.

But, it shouldn't be subject to patent protection, and their patents tend to be dubious at best.

The other thing is that patents or not, it's an extremely hard thing to copy.

But, it shouldn't be subject to patent protection, and their patents tend to be dubious at best.

Unfortunately, this is the situation we find ourselves in. Everything is patented, no matter how absurd, and companies are basically performing rent-seeking by suing everyone who makes something resembling one of their "existing, often poorly implemented, inventions" (which as often as not are just copies of other ideas which have been around a while).

The problem is the absurdity of the patent system, much more so than any of the players. They're all playing the same game, and nobody wins in the end except for the big companies.

How much is Microsoft making off every Android phone again?

I don't see how any company could possibly not be getting embroiled in this unless you simply roll over and cough up a percentage of your earnings to any schmuck who comes along and says he's got a patent.

Well, that was certainly true under Steve Jobs. His legal and emotional responses in this area were formed in the Apple ][ clone battles of the 70's/80's against companies like Orange who created look-alikes that used almost straight copies of the Apple ][ ROMs and motherboards. Apple have since faced numerous issues with copies of their hardware and software, including the infamous battles with Microsoft over Windows Look and Feel and the Psystar Mac clones

they spent a few years doing research into coding just the right algorithm for an OS to detect a human finger and respond appropriately. its true they don't make or invented the touch screen but finding the algorithm to know when its a real finger and not accidentally touching is patent able.

no one is stopping samsung and others from doing the same thing to find their own algorithm

car companies have all kinds of engine patents yet there are something like 10 different car companies selling cars in the US that all take the same gasoline

The basic idea you are referring to is the Otto cycle and it was indeed patented. The patent has long since expired.

if someone comes out with an idea you can always find a better way with some time and effort.

No, you can't, especially when patents are simply too broad. If someone patents the idea of multitouch on a phone, there is no way of implementing multitouch interfaces on a phone without violating the patent, no amtter how much research you do.

its always the asian companies that only want to rip off someone's work just to sell it for less.

Whereas, American companies want to rip it off, sell it for more, then sue the inventor?

They protect an implementation of an idea. If someone else can implement the idea in a way that doesn't infringe on the patent, you're good.

well, maybe in the 19th century. since then things have changed. how else do you explain slide to unlock being patentable ip? not the code behind how it's done, not the loops going on in the program.. not the way electrons are arranged to move between transistors to achieve it.. but the thing that a bitmap changes position on the screen when the detected point of finger touching the screen moves and that causes a program to run.

I can tell you from firsthand experience that patent examiners frown on merely claiming a desired result. If your patent claim is "I claim a cloaking device capable of preventing visible detection of an object," the examiner will usually reject the claim for lack of specificity, even if you've fully disclosed a fully-enabled embodiment of a cloaking device. Of course, your attorney may be clever enough to draft claims broad enough to cover every method of implementing a cloaking device that people are able to come up with for the next 20 years, but if anything I would say that is persuasive that you have something truly revolutionary that deserves patent protection.

According to whom? I do not need to look any further than my own field to know this is untrue: the Diffie Hellman patents were patents on the idea of public key cryptography, and cryptography patents in general are patents on math, not implementations of that math.

its not like the math was always known. someone had to spend years in research discovering that math and the algorithms

if you want to make a crypto patent just devote your life to finding a better way. someone is always making something new. nvidia/intel/amd are always making better CPU's/GPU's even though they patent their designs

First, an algorithm is simply a series of steps that accomplish a goal. That series of steps would have accomplished the same goal before it was ever patented. Nothing new was brought into the world just because somebody thought of the algorithm and then patented it. Also, in most cases lately somebody already DID think of it, they just didn't do it in a mobile device, or on the internet or blah blah blah

Second, for any goal, including your example there are probably only a finite number of possible algorithms to achieve the goal. This certainly can prevent others from doing the same. Even if there are many ways of doing something there is usually only one best way and occasional a few best ways.

As a consumer, when company X has the patent on the best algorithm to do A, company Y has the one for doing B and company Z for C then whose device do I buy? Either they are all overpriced due to money spent fighting in court, paying settlements and licensing fees or they all suck because each is only good at either A, B or C when what I want it for is D, the combination of A, B and C.

Ya know, maybe they don't "invent" things. Whatever. One can say for sure that most of the industry tends to copy Apple's, er, um, 'not inventions'. What did smartphones [gizmodo.com] look like before the iPhone? What did tablets [wikipedia.org] look like before the iPad? Aren't all of the ultra books attempted copies of the Macbook Air? For sure, Intel uses the Air as the target [wikipedia.org].

The point is, whatever you want to call it, Apple does seem to lead the industry (at least recently) and they probably do get a bit tired of seeing everyone make stuff that looks and feels like theirs.

One can say for sure that most of the industry tends to copy Apple's, er, um, 'not inventions'.

Designs. The word you are looking for is designs.

What did smartphones look like before the iPhone?

Well, in 1992, you had the IBM Simon which was a blank slab with nothing but a touchscreen. Due to the manufacturing tech and other constraints of the time, it was quite thick and a bit lumpy, because the basic aerial and speaker tech was not advanced. But bsaically, it's a cuboid with a screen and nothing else.

Then, later you had the LG Prada which was basically the same idea with 2006 era manufacturing and phone tech. That makes it a rather slicker cuboid with a screen and little else.

So yes, Apple didn't invent the idea or basic design, but they produced a very refined version of it.

What did tablets look like before the iPad?

Er, pretty featureless cuboids with little else but a screen and as thin as possible given the state-of-the art manufacturing tech, like the Hp-Compaq TC1100?

Aren't all of the ultra books attempted copies of the Macbook Air?

Again, they were not the first company to make thin or light laptops.

You're again confusing inventing the original idea with producing a good or even leading implementation of the idea. The latter is what Apple do, not the former. There's nothing wrong with that.

Right, because Apple is the only one allowed to make clean, sleek designs. So anything clean and sleek is a copy of an Apple product. If that's not transparently ridiculous, nothing is.

I see someone else has already pointed out that your claims about phones and tablets are hollow. Current smartphones are very much like a palm from the late '90's on steroids. Exactly what any of us would have come up with given the resources. Basically capacitive touch screens made on-screen keyboards usable and the re

no, air's are attempted copies at high end sonys. you seriously suggesting that air invented the ultrathin notebook segment? you don't think that the whole segment is obvious? you want to know why they even came up with it? they couldn't figure out how to make the metal macbook("pro") not eat your wrists with it's 90 degree sharp angle(that would be admitting that the design is shit, which it is).

what did phones look before iphone? uh. I guess you for some reason didn't want to link a htc winmo that lacked

Quite a few things new ways of looking at the world come directly from Apple, or employees they have hired and bought their inventions when no one else was looking at them -- not willing to foster these ideas into something tangible.

And most of the stuff Apple has been complaining about have been things that could have been found by others, but weren't. Or complaining that someone takes a surface level idea and tries to ride the coattails of something much more popular to the point if they didn't sue, it would encourage others to create identical devices without having to put the hours in.

I mean, with touch tablets...we all talk about how there really is only one form factor and that others are simply doing what they would have eventually done anyways, reducing the device to solely what was there. And if this is the case, why did every single tablet that came out before look pretty fucking shitty and now all want to try to look like the iPad. Wasn't like it was the first...yet, they took the time to do it right.

As for other patents...I've had two patents in my name over the years (currently my university is fighting to take my name off because I refuse to 'monetize' them). And everyone in my field has come out and publicly shouted that what I did was OBVIOUS to everyone in the field. And it kinda was. Using time tested techniques and putting it together in a unique way that no one else had. Others had worked for 40 years in the field and got angry that these were patentable...the only reason I even agreed to patent it was that I didn't want to get sued by someone else in the future (and sadly, my employer technically has a suit against me now). And yet, they couldn't put two simple concepts together and make it work because everyone was fighting over the fact that they believed in one or the other concept and never thought to work together (both of which long since past the patent...and it WAS a little more than just adding the two together, but once you did and saw the results, you realized you could achieve far more going down this path than anything else).

So yeah, when Apple combines existing inventions and actually makes them work when others that have had a lot more time and budget (at least 5 years ago)...they have done something that no one else could have done. And more to the point, they had the expertise to figure out what was important, and what isn't important. You really don't know a subject until you can make it useful to someone that isn't an expert in the field.

Quite a few things new ways of looking at the world come directly from Apple, or employees they have hired and bought their inventions when no one else was looking at them -- not willing to foster these ideas into something tangible.

Such as?

And most of the stuff Apple has been complaining about have been things that could have been found by others, but weren't.

Again, such as?

And if this is the case, why did every single tablet that came out before look pretty fucking shitty

No one deserves a 20-year patent monopoly. Or at least no software does.

But that's the way the patent system is set up. We should be somewhat thankful they never increased the time limit on protection, like they did copyrights.

Until this flawed system is fixed, and fixed *properly*, these dumb patents will continue to be filed, granted, contested, and litigated. Thank the lawyers--only politicians have more ability give themselves a guaranteed revenue stream.

Sixth one from the left, top row looks predominantly rectangular and all touchscreen. I also find it interesting that they have all of the screens lit up on the left hand side, whereas the right hand side are all blacked out. That certainly goes a long way toward making them LOOK more uniform, not that a mac fan site should be slighted for using clever advertising.

Also, iPhone came out on June 29th, 2007. The N810 in October of 2007 and looked pretty similar. You can't tell me the N810 was in reactio

Oh, and for completeness sake, the Storm came out about a full year after the N810 (which I suppose technically isn't a phone), but RIM didn't end up on the bottom of the dogpile by being early adopters. Probably dismissed the whole "usable phone" thing as a consumer fad and underestimated the desire in the corporate world.

Also, iPhone came out on June 29th, 2007. The N810 in October of 2007 and looked pretty similar. You can't tell me the N810 was in reaction to the release of the iPhone. There had to be a good deal of parallel development time there..

Steve demonstrated the iPhone in early January 2007. At the time FCC required a long validation period and they didn't want the phone leaked so they announced it and only then filed for compliance and right to sell. So add a whole 6 months to the difference and a total of 10, which is quite copyable...

The iPhone was released in late June '07 but was *announced/demo'ed* January 9. This is a critical point because it widens your hypothetical reaction time between iPhone and N810 from 3 months to 10. Not saying there was any copying, or that the N810 was a reaction to the iPhone, but with almost a full year after the iPhone was demo'ed, it's harder to claim parallel development with near-100% certainty.

The N810 also had a *resistive* touchscreen, and... well, wasn't a phone but an "internet tablet" that relied on wifi or a Bluetooth bridge.

Meanwhile, the LG KE850, aka Prada was not announced Jan 2007, it was announced Dec 12, 2006, less than a month before the iPhone was demo'd. And if your original point with the N810 was that 3 months wasn't enough time for Nokia to copy Apple, Apple definitely didn't copy LG, with less than a month between both announcements (and over Christmas, too).

I watched various video reviews (example [youtube.com]), and LG's own promo video from 2007, and about the only thing similar between the Prada and iPhone is that it has a capacitive touchscreen. The user interface in no way measures up to the original iPhone UI. The Prada at launch didn't have a full keyboard (so T9 only for text entry), and judging from the various apps they basically just transplanted onto a touchscreen the same small-screen, large-text interface seen on phones with a T9 keyboard, with very few UI innovations. Entering contacts was as awkward as I remember when I borrowed a phone in 2005. No multitouch, and what little swiping I saw was for scroll bars, which the reviewer had a very awkward time using, and the responsiveness was jerky (but "good enough", of course).

I know this particular thread is about the hardware. I am not the original poster, and I have no problem saying there's parallel development in touchscreen hardware for phones.

But judging by what I see of the first Prada... no way in hell was it Apple's marketing alone that propelled the iPhone to the top, like you're implying.

The Prada got into user's hands before the iPhone by a few months, but its UI carried over far too much baggage and inappropriate interface elements from older phones, so it was completely and rightly eclipsed less than a month after its intro by the iPhone's intro/demo. And unlike Microsoft's infamous vapourware demos, what we saw of the iPhone in Jan 2007, we got that summer.

I don't like the hardware comparison picture "proof" myself, that's why I wasn't objecting to that. I just couldn't let the "It's almost as if Apple's a marketing company first" bit pass... Apple had something clearly superior in the ways that mattered to regular users.

Marketing gets people in the door, it can't keep them if your product is crappy or doesn't do what they expect. That's why some people try the iPhone, honestly don't like it for whatever reason, switch to something else, and that's cool by me

And settling with Trolls does not do this. Settlements tend to be under NDAs, and therefore nobody knows how much was bled, how little the gain was, or how much you can hold a corporation hostage for. This leads to a prospectors climate, and the only way out is to force things into actual litigation and set new precedents.

It's short sighted of Apple (Cook) to avoid such lawsuits. They have the biggest war ches

Which parts are off the shelf? The cases are Apple-specific. In fact, in the case of the aluminum 'Books, Apple owns the process and the machinery. Samsung makes the CPU, but they are just the foundry - Apple designs the circuitry.

Apple is successful in their hardware, but data is the future of tech money. Targeted (and automated) marketing will rule the industry while Apple produces commodity products that will be copied and copied again, destroying the margins.

There is money in their productions. And they can continue to make money in it if they can keep inventing new devices. In 2002, they didn't invent the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, or iPad yet. Their business model will always make them profits, but there is a limit. The limit is based on how many new products they come up with.

In contrast, data itself has perpetual value. Anyone can make a device. Not everyone can collect data from such a HUGE segment of the population and have the capability to keep in cont

As someone involved the tech world in exactly this "data is king" business model, I can tell you from direct experience that there's a hard limit on the value of data, and that's the value placed on it by business consumers. To quote the Calgary Flames marketing department, "we don't give a shit about surveying our customers". And they don't. They know who their customers are, what their demographic profile is, etc. They cared about (and used) our product because it offered another avenue of engagement, which is a separate concern.

Everyone involved in the data side always spins great fantasies about precision marketing and deep knowledge of your customers, without acknowledging that in many cases, deep knowledge isn't even useful or worth paying for because it doesn't increase engagement or conversion rates or redemption ratios. Remember Xmarks, the bookmarks plugin people who thought there'd be tremendous value in having an aggregate-able database of everyone's bookmarks? They built that database, and then ran out of money because no one wanted to do anything with it. They were saved only because someone else saw an opportunity to sell a premium version of their plugin.

I'm not saying data's worthless, by any means. But it's not particularly valuable in and of itself.

They will try to make new devices. I bet that they won't be nearly as successful as iTunes or the iPhone.

You are thinking really narrow with respect to the power of data. If the Calgary Flames sell out all the time, then data isn't as important as it is for 99% of other businesses that could always use more traffic/business. Sure there is advertising, which is the most visible use of the data. But there is national and corporate security, identifying untapped markets, car and mass transit traffic logist

I'm not thinking narrowly about the power of data, I'm recognizing that there are barriers to exploiting data economically based on the fact that, for most of what businesses do, they just don't need all that data. You're positing tremendous potential for advanced uses of data; I'm pointing out that most businesses aren't even set up or capable or desiring to do even mildly complicated things with vast data sets. Most businesses struggle to do normal things well, or recognize (like the Flames) that adding

Your post doesn't make any sense. You can't accumulate, store, or access data without hardware. Advertising is a different industry than the ones Apple chiefly participates in (iAd being a mere blip on their earnings report).
Apple's products are not viewed as commodities by the market, which is why they command huge margins--margins that went up year over year if you bothered to read the earnings report.
Apple's products have been copied and copied again and they still maintain premium status in the eyes of the consumer--margins haven't been destroyed and there's no reason to think they will be in the near term.

Yeah. All those millions and millions of people are "brain dead fanbois." It couldn't be that Apple has done a good job inbound marketing, product design, product line segmentation, supply chain management, vertical integration, distribution, retail, and outbound marketing. What an incisive analysis...

Would you also say that BMW and Mercedes will be unable to command higher margins long term?

Apple doesn't just sell hardware. They are selling devices + software + services and as gatekeepers to the ecosystem, they are taking a healthy cut of all the revenue that their devices generate. Even if their hardware margins slip, the ecosystem is large and healthy enough that their profits should continue to astound.

The Dell's and HP's of the world know they are screwed in the consumer space because they can't mat

Finally, one analyst dared ask a question about Apple's litigation battles when it comes to patents. "I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it," Cook said, but "we just want people to invent their own stuff."

He is still an arrogant ass (yes I will probably lose some karma for that one)

There's no skill in polishing. It's all about holding up a clunky rock and expecting people to beat a path to your door. Making it attractive and comfortable and fun to use is just useless fanboi marketing techniques. No skill involved there. Thats why everyone does that and there's only a couple companies out there that make new stuff.

It'd be nice to see Apple let up on the Vendetta approach Jobs took to so many problems. I'd love to see them ease up on the Adobe hatred as well. Flash may have it's issues but a good share of the web uses it so it's a pain my iDevices refuse to acknowledge it. For all his pluses Jobs had an irrational confrontational approach to companies he saw as competition or even companies that resisted doing things his way.

Being both of those things just makes it obvious you are a threat to the community at large. You shouldn't do that before you have gotten yourself fully entrenched. An appropriate smack down is much more likely to be effective.

Flash is a poorly written battery hog. One of the reasons Apple banned Flash is because it makes the device look bad. In the end, I think Apple was right about Flash and they are probably mostly responsible for Flash's death.

Normally though, I agree that the user should be the one to decide. For example, the DVR I bought from DirecTV is perfectly capably of playing Netflix streams, yet it doesn't include that capability, nor can I install it. My PS3 is also locked down.

> Destroying Flash, which is taking.NET with it, is about the best thing Apple has done in the last ten years.

Taking.NET with it? Huh? The new hot thing in the mobile development space is C#/Mono (Open source.NET) because it's the only language/platform that's available on iOS/Android/Windows (Is it also on BlackBerry? I don't know.) Phone. You write 95% of your mobile code in Mono/Ximian and then only need some native 'glue code' to hook the UI to the shareable code. How's the taking.NET with it?

I don't want them to let Flash on iDevices. I've refused to install Flash on my development machine at work since before there was an iPhone (well, before the world at large knew about it, anyway), and IMO the web has improved with the reduction of Flash use where it was entirely unnecessary.

The only downside to all this is the ads that used to use Flash (and thus were automatically blocked for me, no effort necessary) are now using other techniques that don't rely on browser plugins.

What I would like is just the ability to access my iDevice's raw filesystem and the functionality I get by jailbreaking. I don't care if I have to buy an iOS membership to get this -- I want to be able to pop a command line, grab an E-mail attachment, edit it, encrypt it with a gpg key on the device, then scp it from the phone (likely in/var/mobile) to the remote device. Yes, this might be possible if one has enough apps that cooperate with each other, but it is far easier to just have a command shell wh

One of the core issues was Adobe's creative suite, when they ported it to OS X they used Carbon rather than Cocoa. They knew Carbon wouldn't live forever yet they threw a temper tantrum when Apple started dropping Carbon in favor of the all-Cocoa future. Then they seemed to realize that if they dropped OS X as a platform they'd most likely end up losing customers as others (possibly including Apple themselves) filled the void, apparently they figure out that users of Adobe software on Apple platforms are generally more loyal to Apple than Adobe...

Yes and no. At time when these platforms were announced, Classic was for backwards compatibility. Carbon was acceptable for future use as an intermediate step but it was always stated eventually Cocoa would be the ultimate platform. The shelf life of Carbon was not set in stone. I think Apple played around with the idea of Carbon 64, but decided to kill it for a few reasons. First of which was that a lot of the functionality was already in Cocoa and second, Adobe was one of the few developers that were

There are actually several reasons that Apple had for avoiding Flash, and I'm inclined to think that most (not all) were rather good ones. They don't avoid Adobe completely... their ibook reader handles PDF fairly well (although I do wish that the bookmark facility supported openable and closeable nested bookmarks, rather than just always having them all expanded out)

Flash has been a blight for over a decade. If what it took to kill it was Apple drawing a line in the sand with its iDevices, praise be to Apple. I don't care if it's nearly ubiquitous, it's terrible. And frankly, Jobs was right that a lot of the way Flash works doesn't work well with how you use your touch device.

I find this particularly interesting since I would assume that market penetration should be causing their growth to slow -- hell they did worse than they did last quarter which, although still good, is a sign they're slowing somewhat, right? So I looked it up on this BGR blog site and it appears that only one analyst thinks so, Brian White. Can anyone provide several other analysts who thing "Apple is just getting started"?

I also found some of Brian White's quotes to be less than analytical:

“Apple fever rocks on”

and

"Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world and we see no end in sight to this trend"

I hate to engage in character assassination but that really doesn't sound like any of the analyst reports I've ever read. They're usually dry as hell and stick to the numbers. Numbers numbers numbers, usually that's all that matters. Anyone got numbers on market penetration instead of telling me "Apple fever has no end in sight"?

hell they did worse than they did last quarter which, although still good, is a sign they're slowing somewhat, right?

Wrong. The holiday quarter and quarters containing new product launches have a huge influence over revenue. You can't measure things quarter to quarter, you have to go to the year ago quarter to check growth and even then you have to take into consideration if one or the other was a launch quarter.

If you want to know why certain people (yours truly included) are betting big on AAPL, consider

I think the part the analysts are looking at it the Asia Pacific market share. There are billions of potential customers in Chindia and surrounding villages. Even if / when the North American / European market gets saturated, you can count on sales figures from the 'developing world' to, well, develop.

Should give them a couple more years.

It's not much different from the US car manufacturers who are seeing stable to decreasing sales in NA / Europe but are busily building factories in China for domestic con

Apple can easily step into the corporate sector for a large revenue stream any time they wanted. Right now, they are doing well as they are, but if the existing revenue streams run low, it wouldn't be hard for them to step into the enterprise. They would need to make some changes to existing machines (such as a modified Mac Pro case that is mountable on a rack drawer with all parts easily accessible), and run an "Apple means business" campaign, and they would make definite inroads into the corporate secto

"There are three freely convertible currencies in the world, but none of them count. The American Dollar has recently collapsed, the Renminbi is only exchangeable for other Renminbi, and the Apple Quarter has its own very special problems. It exchange rate of five Apple Nickels to one Apple Quarter is simple enough, but since an Apple Quarter is worth $100 billions, no one has ever collected enough to own one Apple Quarter. Canadian Tire bills are not negotiable currency, because bank

Other companies must be having fits that Apple can sell shiny bits with rounded corners at high prices while everyone else squeaks by at much lower margins. When I have bought Apple products for my wife or granddaughter, it felt much more like buying jewelry or Steuben glass than a tech purchase. Beautiful and just as sensibly priced. Silly though.

More like Jobs had a huge quarter. Once Tim's been in charge and the germinating seeds Jobs planted aren't still coming to fruition, Tim can go ahead and take the credit. If, in a few years, the company is still making money hand over fist, I'll salute him. Right now it's Thanks Steve. RIP

They are still selling products developed in the Jobs era. The product pipeline is the big concern. The next iphone will be the first phone developed without any oversight from Jobs. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Personally, I think some cracks are already showing. The iPad 3 was mostly a tech update. Siri, the main feature of the last iPhone, has usability issues that make it a lightly used curiosity. Siri is the kind of feature that Jobs was legendary for forcing his engineers to get working

Apple are still small players in the global market. They are just getting started and they sell products with a 2-year lifespan and have no serious competition (I say this as the owner of a Nexus S running ICS). Android generates little revenue, Microsoft isn't even trying, and RIM still thinks it's 2002. I don't think it could get much better for Apple right now.

They might not hurt each other but they hurt everyone else in the process. This has shown how the future might turn out, with everyone using patents to keep the other side from competing and ultimately making sure that any new comer either has to buy a lot of patents OR has to spend a fortune licensing up front of any actual earnings making it again impossible for a small startup to get started.

Steve Jobs showed himself to be a really bad apple, in human society, you got to learn not to take afront of every

Steve wasn't that bright. Sure, he was smart, shrewd and an authoritative asshole based on others that have had to directly work with the man. All hallmarks that define effective leadership. From that aspect, he was just another benevolent dictator. And historically, people love this type of character.

A short look at the numbers shows that their quarter actually sucked. They sold less units in this quarter than they did in the last quarter.

Almost no one compares quarter to quarter results for this simple reason: Apple's Q2 covers Jan - Mar. Q1 covers Oct - Dec (the holiday season). For a consumer electronics company, you'd expect them to have a slight drop off in sales after the holidays.

The opposite quarter-over-quarter was true for the same period in '11.

Where do you get that? Apple's numbers in millions of units:
Q1 2011

Computers: 4.13

iPhones: 16.24

iPads: 7.33

iPods: 19.45

Q2 2011:

Computers: 3.76

iPhones: 18.65

iPads: 4.69

iPods: 9.02

Q1 2012

Computers: 5.2

iPhones: 37.04

iPads: 15.43

iPods: 15.4

Q2 2012

Computers: 4

iPhones: 35.1

iPads: 11.8

iPods: 7.7

Except for iPods which are constantly declining they are increasing sales year to year.

Their absolute numbers are higher than they were last year because they entered new markets. But they are already declining in these new markets after being there for only 2 quarters.

I don't understand how you came to this analysis. The iPad was launched in 2009. Every years it sells more and more. The iPhone was launched in 2007. Every year, more are sold.

They have not gained any market share on Android.

So one company with variations of one phone manage to sell more every year with a majority of the profit, yet cannot outsell dozens of companies with hundreds of models but don't make as much profit and you're not impressed. Also same company pretty much has the majority of tablet sales. You're not impressed.

Everyone is trying to compare them to last year because it's something to compare to which shows an increase. But a quarter-over-quarter decrease is a very troubling sign.

No this is not a sign of trouble because your analysis is faulty. Everyone else is doing the analysis correctly. Year to year is the way to do it.

And they haven't quite beat the reduced market estimates. The estimates were that they would sell 13 million iPads. They sold less than 12 million iPads.

Please. Half the analysts have said that Apple was going to release a iPhone mini years ago. An iPad mini, etc. Analysts predictions are always off.